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BY LUCIA MAURO
If theatre has the power to heal, Gilead Theatre Company aims to provide audiences with a conscience-rejuvenating salve. The serious-minded company, originally called Impact Theatre, changed its name and solidified its mission after its 1997 debut production of Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead at the Neo-Futurarium space. The hymnal proclamation that "there is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin sick soul" spurred the group on to presenting plays "evoking the triumph of the human spirit."
In our cynical times, this sounds like a lofty–perhaps futile–goal. But the Gilead artists remain steadfast in this commitment, while not losing sight of the business side of their creative endeavors.
"We showcase the underdog," says co-artistic director Michael Ryczek. "We explore the personal or societal response to tragedies that happen in the world."
I’ve had the opportunity to experience all four of Gilead’s productions, each rooted in profound soul searching. Their terrifyingly honest staging of Balm in Gilead taxed all of the actors’ inner resources, making any walls between character and human being swiftly evaporate.
Ryczek, who directed, first presented this play as his masters directing thesis at Roosevelt University. Fellow Gilead co-artistic director Phil Donlon starred as the agonized, stammering Fick in that production–a role he reprised at the Neo-Futurarium. Donlon encouraged Ryczek to bring the energy of that college staging to a larger audience. Together with fellow Roosevelt alum Todd Frampton–Gilead’s producing artistic director–they re-mounted the show. The company grew out of Balm in Gilead.
The following year, for Martin Sherman’s Holocaust-set drama, Bent, the artists tore apart the Athenaeum Theatre’s downstairs studio and transformed it into a barbed wire-lined concentration camp. It remains one of my most emotionally eviscerating theatrical experiences. In 1999, Gilead brought its abstract Richard II: Poet-King to Chopin Theatre. But the splitting of the title character into two divergent entities within an unfocused context made this piece difficult to penetrate.
Its current midwest premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s psychologically fragmented Tongue of a Bird–running through Nov. 26 at the Theatre Building–bravely traverses surreal interior landscapes but gets hampered by the playwright’s repetitive aviary imagery and overly conscious sense of desperation. Yet each Gilead show has set out in a commendable way to erase that imaginary line between performers and their audiences.
Gilead’s development, however, has progressed in a reverse fashion from what most local theatre companies experience. Ryczek, former artistic director of Reflections Theater and former managing director of Lookingglass Theatre, was able to secure $20,000 in funding from an individual donor for Gilead’s inaugural production. That immediately bumped them up to for-profit status, making the expectations for future shows extremely high and opportunities for grants slim.
That large chunk of money has not always been available to Gilead. And, due to a variety of circumstances, the company did not obtain 5013c not-for-profit status until this year.
"It took us so long to get not-for-profit status," says Donlon metaphorically, "because we hopped on a fast-moving train and forgot to buy a ticket."
Luckily, Bent was a critical and box office hit. But Richard II flopped. A "financial disaster," according to Donlon, it shut down Gilead for one year–a fact that points to another challenge. How does a small itinerant company, run by four artists (including managing director Kate Garassino), maintain a following when it mounts a show only once a year?
Donlon and Ryczek admit it’s been a challenge. But they have made a conscious effort to build a business-savvy board whose chairwoman is employed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The board handles all fundraising activities, including an annual spring black-tie benefit at the Three Arts Club. Ryczek has recently formed "The Creative Coalition," a multidisciplinary arm of Gilead consisting of actors, musicians and artists who meet on Monday nights to discuss strategies for developing more boundary-stretching shows that remain within their mission.
Gilead is clearly not an ensemble theatre. Its emphasis rests on the material and how that material represents a triumph of the human spirit. Shows are cast by audition. Ryczek stresses, when an actor performs in a Gilead show, "all they have to do is concentrate on their roles; they don’t have to paint sets or clean toilets."
Plans for a yet-unannounced spring 2001 show are under way. Donlon is interested in the work of Robert Alexander, playwright-in-residence at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C. Another possibility is Ryczek’s adaptation of The Exorcist–a project that got put on hold last year when Gilead’s rights were pulled because of the film’s re-release. Ryczek also envisions more experimental pieces involving montages of found text.
In a re-cap of their past four productions, Donlon points to a soul-based pattern. Balm in Gilead centered on lost souls; Bent on people trying to hold onto their souls; Richard II on a man whose soul is torn from him; and Tongue of a Bird on a woman seeking to reclaim her soul.
Their mission is ultimately a transcendent and purely theatrical one.
"We don’t have an interest in doing plays with a living-room set," says Ryczek. "We’re more interested in getting into the raw theatrics of a piece."